“Doesn’t your father have a man to do this for him?” Peterson asked just as she was chewing on the most accurate way of expressing a particularly difficult sentence.
Her quill hovered over the paper, frustration bunching her muscles. “Yes.” Hateful question. How many times had she been asked that? Never by Richard. But by other men? Constantly.
She must stop these useless comparisons. Despite their differences, only their one similarity mattered—they were men not worth trusting. “But I am better than them all.”
Peterson made a sound. Half grunt, stuck in his throat. She faced him, one brow raised high.
“Yes?” she asked.
“It is only…” He shifted, uncrossing his legs, then recrossing them in the other direction. “You have not had the same formal training in languages a man has. Have you?”
“I am mostly self-taught.” Not that it mattered. She was excellent at what she did. Otherwise, her father would not trust her with his contracts. Her self-education was thorough, consisting of the linguistic and legal knowledge necessary for her task. Yet… She rolled her shoulders, trying to roll her doubt away. Her father did not pay her. Did not think it seemly to pay a woman, his daughter, for her services. So perhaps he trusted the funds she saved him more than he trusted her talent. A long-held fear.
Damn Peterson for pulling it out into the light.
If Peterson proved equally chatty in bed, taking him for a lover would be cause for mourning not celebration.
“Why not learn a more suitable language?” he asked.
“Such as?”
“French?”
“No, thank you.” She turned back to the table, snapping up her quill. “Spanish is my mother’s tongue.”
He seemed to recognize her response for what it was—a dismissal of the subject. He lapsed into silence, his leg shaking at such a speed, her chair might vibrate across the room. Paper. Ink. She focused on it, tried to narrow her world to it alone. Tried to write smoothly despite his shaking.
She’d been here before. In this very library, alone with a man. This time so different from that one. Years ago. Another man so different from this one…
Richard lay on the chaise lounge near the writing desk she’d commandeered in the library, one leg stretched out, the other bent, the sole of his boot flat on the rug. At the end of his stretched-out leg, his foot swung back and forth lazily, like a lion’s tail, as he stared at the ceiling. He was silent as the grave in his contemplation.
All the noise came from Beatrice, from her quill scratching across paper. Happy silence, happy scritch scratch. She found herself humming, too, the words of two languages pouring together more smoothly than they usually did. Happy companionship, perhaps, gave her confidence. Two pages ofDon Quixotehad transformed beneath her hand with ease. She was improving. Soon her father would not be able to deny her expertise, would agree to let her translate his agreements with his Spanish trade partners.
Yes, he’d missed the last three meetings she’d scheduled with his man of business, but… he could not put her off forever. She’d thought this week would provide ample opportunity to prove her value to him. He’d promised to escort her to Slopevale, to remain there for the length of the party.
He’d never showed, and she’d arrived in the country a day late from waiting.
A knot in her chest tightened, and she gently placed her quill on the table to press the heels of her hands into her stinging eyes. Shaking off the shadows, she faced Richard. Stretched out, lean and lazy, the softest grin beneath closed eyes, his dark hair sweeping back from his sun-bronzed face. That grin, so satisfied it turned a handsome man into a demigod. Her father might not be here, but Mr. Clark was, and his long, muscled form gave her an odd, electric sort of comfort.
“What are you thinking of?” she asked quietly.
“Nothing.”
“Surely something.”
“Hm. Perhaps, if I’m thinking of anything, it’s to wonder what you’re writing, to wish I could read it.”
“Why haven’t you asked?”
He shrugged. “We might argue. And I’m rather enjoying this feeling.”
“Which is?”
“I think… belonging.”
She pressed a hand to her cheek—hot, surely red.
He sat upright, leg still outstretched, boot still swinging at the end of it. “Cannot say for certain, though, never having felt it before.”
